YouTube AdSense Will No Longer Be Your Source for YouTube AdSense Earnings

In what is a kind of curious forthcoming move, the YouTube Creator Blog reported that, as of April 1, partners will no longer be getting their AdSense earnings reports from AdSense itself. Instead, partners will have to go to YouTube Analytics for the complete story on their earnings, which are separated into “auction” ads (AdSense) and “reserve” ads (YouTube earnings). AdSense will continue to tabulate partners’ total earnings, but it will not give partners their separate AdSense earnings anymore starting next week.

What Does This Mean?

Well, this is a curious move mainly because it’s just kind of a strange thing for YouTube to change. But I guess because AdSense was only telling partners half the story, since they didn’t include the “reserve” ads in the reporting, and they felt like it was rather pointless to be showing just the AdSense earnings. So now, AdSense will report the total earnings (AdSense + YouTube), but it won’t break it down any further.

With YouTube Analytics, the main problem people had is that the earnings reports lagged behind AdSense’s reporting. But YouTube is touting an improved system on Analytics that reports earnings within 24 hours of the end of the day. With Analytics, you can break down your earnings reports in all sorts of different ways and it shows you how your ads perform.

If you go to Analytics, it’s these kinds of ads featured to the right:

“Auction Display” ads are either banner (300×250) ads that play to the right of the video or “InVideo Ads” that are play in an overlay on the video itself. They are sold via AdSense Auction.

“Reserved Display” ads are banner (300×250) that play to the right of the video, and are sold directly to advertisers.

“Reserved In-Stream” ads are unskippable ads that play before, during, or after videos, sold directly through Reserved Media Buys.

“Auction In-Stream” ads are unskippable but sold through AdSense Auctions.

“Auction TrueView” ads are the skippable ads that have been all the rage on YouTube for awhile now, but the newest of the ad formats they offer.

All the auction ads are AdSense. And you won’t be able to break those down in your AdSense account anymore. The reserve ads are YouTube-specific ads. You’ve been able to break all this down with Analytics, anyway, it’s just that many people wanted to see those AdSense numbers as soon as they were available and Analytics had a hard time keeping up. Now, you may have to give it that 24-hour window to get information that is up-to-date. And, as mentioned, AdSense will still show the total amount of earnings, you just won’t be able to see a good breakdown of the ads as partially shown above. This changes nothing as far as how partners are paid, it just streamlines the process.

So, a bit of a strange announcement today. It didn’t make much sense after I read it a few times, but in the end, the story is this: if you want a comprehensive report on your YouTube earnings, you’ll have to go to YouTube Analytics starting on April 1.

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